It's upgrade time
 

Currently descending on our address are various shipments from various vendors via various shipping companies all comprising the next-generation home network at the GD/CP residence. I'm so freaking excited.

We had been hoping to make the jump back into Mac-dom and bet an iBook of some sort. But I'm finally frightened enough of losing our data (we have an external backup drive running over USB 1.0 that's way too slow to be used regularly and I'm way too forgetful to be responsible about making use of it) that it made much more sense to take the same amount of money and buy a mid-range Dell laptop and build myself a RAID-5 backup server.

This is what happens when you work in the enterprise storage industry.

Anyway, so here's the tale of the tape:

Laptop - primary daily use system
*Dell Inspiron 1721, Dual core AMD Turion, 2.0Ghz
*2GB RAM
*17" glossy widescreen (1920x1200)
*Built-in 802.11n (prelim spec, of course)
*(skipped the spiffy $50 paint job)
$1500

File server - Will serve network volumes to be backed up on RAID-5
I'm building this from the ground up to be low power and hopefully fault-tolerant
* Mid-tower case with low 370W power supply
* AMD dual core Athlon 4200 (2.2Ghz, only 65W)
* 2GB ram
* Gigabyte Socket AM2 mother board with Gig-E and built in RAID-5
* 3x400GB Maxtor SATA drives for RAID-5 volume
* 1x160GB Maxtor SATA drive for system OS and network volume
* 1x300GB USB 2.0 external drive for further network volume
* Simple CD-burner/DVD-rom combo drive + floppy (for driver install)
* A few other accessories
A STEAL at $940 delivered, including Windows Vista Ultimate

Included in the price of the laptop is a Wireless-N router

The plan is to have the server be an always-on solution (thus the low power focus) serve a couple network drives (the smaller SATA and the big external USB, 400GB+) to the laptop to store vital files (namely photos and music) while creating some sort of automated backup policy to write it to the RAID-5 volume (should have ~800GB of backup space). I'll have to play with Vista's built-in shadow-copy functionality to see if it'll suffice, or there's some pretty good freeware backup solutions out there.

I'm so excited. Both that I will finally feel some level of comfort about how safe and retrievable my data is (nothing's fool-proof, but automated backup onto a fault-tolerant volume is a good place to start), and because I get to build the server from scratch.

I can already hear the cries of, "Vista?! Go Linux, man!" Eh, I've got my reasons to stick with Windows, chief among them being ease of dealing with RAID drivers and ease of sharing network volumes without dealing with Samba (*shudder*).

/drool

"Vista?! Go Windows Server 2003 or even XP, man!"

I had my new laptop shipped with XP. Dell still sells them that way, but possibly only the Latitudes.

Bummer you cant make the jump. I agree with Moonliner. Go 2003 server. My experiences with Vista have been horrible. Not very intuitive and frustrating.

Can you install unbuntu on that raid? ;-)

I've had absolutely no problem with Vista still.

But it would be moot for me, I haven't backed up a computer since 1991 (existing files tend to go in the trash with the old computer) so this system would be wasted space for me.

Wow, color me impressed. I don't even know how to backup my computer.

1) I can't afford Server 2003 and for once I didn't feel like stealing from work (I know, weirded me out too. I think this is the first time I've actually paid for any Microsoft product outside of an OS pre-loaded on an off-the-shelf system).

2) Server 2003 is massive overkill for what I want to do

3) I've been running vista at work since the very first beta release. I'm well versed in it and have no problem getting it to do what I need it to do.

4) I expect newer technologies to be supported on Vista. I'm in the mood to move forward, and unless we're talking failure on the level of Windows ME, I see no reason to hold off just because companies are still catching up on writing drivers.

Believe me, I've thought this through a thousand times.

Unbuntu was an option, but I chose the easy-integration with existing infrastructure (namely TiVo and iTunes) over the gains of going Unbuntu. I know much of it is overcomable, but not worth the inevitable nagging incompatibilities, imo. I'll likely turn the old desktop into a Linux playgound.

Have I mentioned how glad I am to have this man as my husband? :D I'm sure he's glad to have a wife that will let him set up a RAID-5 server from scratch, with only a few questions asked. I'll be sure to bug him throughout the process so I can learn what to expect from such a system. I'm pretty damn excited myself, since our current "system" of the abandoned computer upstairs connected to an external HD that's never turned on has sucked for a long time....plus our laptop is well beyond its peak performance.

Oh crap, we never really shopped for that sofa table, did we?

Grrr, I hate package delivery nonsense. They'll only attempt to deliver during business hours, and if you're lucky, the pickup locations are open until 6 at the latest. 90% of the what we've bought is available in the form of 2 packages (one UPS, one DHL), but I'm only going to be able to pick one up the UPS one tonight because DHL's only open until 5. Then I get to play this game again next week when 3 more packages arrive. Everything is "signature required" and having already had one large, expensive shipment stolen from our carport, I ain't trusting anyone to sign for me.